11-XI-1999.
My machine arrived. A 400 MHz Celeron, 128M RAM, 14,2G disk, DVD reader (could choose that or a CD burner for the same price) and a 17" montor (which I flatly refused and took one of 19", replaced in a couple of days). In the afternoon bought a 50$ chair (metal tubes frame, casters) and a stand (same, no casters) to put the monitor and keyboard on. The machine was about 720$, plus 200$ for the monitor and then there'll be some for the cables - to connect the power, Burt's amp, phone cable for the modem... This is the beginning of a long series of machines, all in this same box, always inheriting lots of hardware from the previous machine, each called zmajček.
The HW guy at Zero says that old movies, when remastered for DVD, look just great. Remember him saying something about watching 2001 odissey and dropping his jaw. Few weeks later he was just gone, and we got Ted instead, which was much better. This guy was grumpy most of the time and looked half asleep too. And while that did look cool on him, we actually had to wait a lot. Ted would prove to be about twice as efficient.
Later, this about DVDs turned out half true. Yes, it looks better, but that's when you compare it with watching the same movie on TV or VHS. Not quite movie quality, but still the best home show you can get. The choice of movies on DVD is a different matter - the club in the Kroger grocery has 5 (yes, only five) of them, and at least one of them is a disney. Found more later, but for the first year the choice was meager and we had to buy a TV to see all those movies. Burt kept bringing tapes then. In an email, he says Zyanna is losing her job so he's giving her "...one of the old Pentium 75 boxes. She is mainly a Mac user (like most graphic artists) but finds it helpful to have a PC sometimes, especially since her Mac is old. Would you like any leftovers? There might be enough to make one or two serviceable machines for your daughters, maybe. I don't know yet what I'll be getting. I think there are three P75s, each with 16 or 32 MB RAM, a 500 - 800 MB HD, lousy network card, and case. No operating system. I might make one with 32 or 64 MB and two of those little hard drives, and leave enough to make another one. Anything we don't want probably can go to charity or something."
Škrba has posted whole opus of Đorđe Balašević on a FTP on a server which he maintains, so I downloaded the whole directory and had the HW guy burn a CD for me (all mp3, of course). That disk lasted about eight years and then it just cracked.
Dad reports that the guys from the heating came and took off the gas meter (as we asked). He's maintaining the phone line by placing a couple of calls every month from our phone. oma is going through some serious paperwork (invitation letter, warranty of some sort) to get a visa to Germany to spend yet another winter visiting her brother (and probably not sister, Inge) and few other relatives.
One girl from aman asks "how long did you get that H1-B for, because I want to know whether it's a true story that the Yugos are getting it now for six months only. From what I see the conditions for visas for our folks are horribly sharpened - my sister had all the possible and impossible papers (+purchased ticket) and was refused for a one-week visa for - Czech republic! Then a friend who is for years now representing several dutch companies reports that he got only three months, and for a single entry." My reply "what are we, leprous? And we can't do much here, no green card yet, so wife can't work but sews, knits, crochets... anything to keep busy. If the kids teachers could vouch for us, we'd get the green right away, they're so happy to have some smart kids in the class for a change".
In the emails, the USquad guys keep mentioning me as the (luckily distant) boss. They, being kind of covert operation, couldn't use Avai's space, but temporarily had a room at Joška's (actually his inlaws'). Then his father-in-law mentioned sharing the cost of heating, at 100DEM a month, so the boys arranged to scatter to their homes and gather as needed. They're seriously working for Zero, they like the taste of dollars. The house of tanti (deceased) was also considered as worth renting; actually Pali asked if he could move in or rent it or what. (The house was sold later and she got the money - oma's house will once go to Arpi.)
У увозу из *** нема ги падеж _ерас:2 овди *** сам извео још једно чишћење, овог пута побацао разне макро замене. *** нема ги падеж _фокс овди *** уме то да уради, да му потуриш команду или израз у стрингу, и да то изведе као да је тако потурена команда била део програма, али то мора да се компајлира у трку, док се изводи, што кошта нешто времена. Дакле, паметно са тим, може добро да дође али уме да кошта. Овде је неко то користио навелико, и ствар је и даље била спора (а пре месец и нешто је била још спорија...). Дакле велико прање и код је изашао чистији, читљивији и бржи.
In the EONS import I performed another purge, this time yanked the macro substitutions out. fox can do that, you stuff a command or expression in a string variable into a command, and it executes the line as if the content of the variable was a part of the program. But then such a line needs to be compiled on the fly, immediately before execution, which costs some time. So, use it wisely, it may help you a lot but it may cost. Here somebody went very liberal with that, so the thing was still slow (and about a month ago it was much slower...). So a big wash and the code came out cleaner, more readable and faster.
Wrote to admin of sezam, that agency Beta published a news, stating that „The 'Otpor!' student movement announced that the ISP 'Sezampro' has canceled all the accounts of the movement and its activists. The announcement states that between 2nd and 5th of november the admins have canceled three 'business' accounts and then proceeded with cancelling 26 members' accounts“. Told them that if this is so, there's no chance I'd be paying them any subscription soon.
Mentions: aman bre, Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Avai, EONS, fox, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Inge tanti, Joška Apro, Larry Artois, oma, Pali Bodor, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), sezam, tanti, Ted Gulding, USquad, Zero Distance (Zero), zmajček, Zyanna, in serbian
19-XI-2014 - 20-VI-2024